Synthetic Chemistry For All
Organic reactions are facilitated and controlled by the functional groups of the reactants. In general, alkyls are unreactive and difficult to get to react selectively at the desired positions, with few exceptions. In contrast, unsaturated carbon functional groups, and carbon-oxygen and carbon-nitrogen functional groups have a more diverse array of reactions that are also selective. It may be necessary to create a functional group in the molecule to make it react. For example, to synthesize iso-octane (the 8-carbon ideal gasoline) from the unfunctionalized alkane isobutane (a 4-carbon gas), isobutane is first dehydrogenated into isobutene. This contains the alkene functional group and can now dimerize with another isobutene to give iso-octene, which is then catalytically hydrogenated to iso-octane using pressured hydrogen gas.
Read more about this topic: Functional Group
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